So Much for Serendipity in Personalized News
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Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Graham family’s sale of theWashington Post to Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos hasprompted intense discussion of the future of journalism. Thatdiscussion has yet to focus on a remarkable feature of the Postand other old-fashioned newspapers: They provide people with agreat deal of content that they wouldn’t have chosen in advance.
Newspapers create what we might call an architecture ofserendipity, in which readers encounter all sorts of stories,facts, ideas and opinions that they didn’t select. Much of whatthey encounter seems boring, irritating, wrong or offensive, buton occasion it turns out to be surprising, delightful, alarming,important and even life-changing.